In 1989, Physicist Tim Berners-Lee proposed “a large hypertext database with typed links” to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, his employer at the time. It was accepted and built the following year, becoming the backbone of technologies that still powers the World Wide Web. So, if we were to put an age on the Web, we might say that its just a few years older than the incoming freshman and roughly around the age of the new seniors here today.

Since its early days, the web has grown to become a central force in our daily lives. The most popular encyclopedia exists only in online form, the web has become the first place we turn to for information on health topics, we read more news online than we do in print, we have cyber Monday, and some web- or tech-related companies now have more cash in reserve than our federal government.

It’s not news to you that most phones these days can connect to the Internet - about half of all the mobile phones sold nowadays are smart phones - Itty-bitty computers that fit in your pocket that connect you to the worlds information and to one another. But it's not just smart phones that offer this connection - we have laptops, desktops, iPads, netbooks, tablets, and a whole host of devices that give us the capability to check the weather, check our assignments, and check on our friends, all at our convenience and all almost as instantly as we desire to.

Our connected digital lives are great, the web and the technologies we use to connect to it allow us to do so many amazing things.

Just consider social networking sites like Facebook for a moment. Studies from Michigan State have shown that the average college undergraduate has about 300 friends on this social networking site. Everyday a large portion of users update their own status, a fifth of users comment on another’s status or photos, and around 10% send a private message to another user. In aggregate, that's a lot of messages. That's a lot of connectivity.

For those of us in the audience who are a bit older, it is no wonder that Facebook has been given credit for helping to reactivate previous relationships that have gone dormant, like those with our high-school friends. But for the undergrads here, it is not unreasonable to believe that with the help of technologies like Facebook, the connections you will make throughout your lives will be preserved forever and will be only a click away. Today, like never before we can connect with people around the world, and potentially, never be disconnected.

However, there is a hidden cost to the connections we maintain. Keeping track of all of these updates and all of this information can lead us to constantly shuffle between all of our devices and connections. Technology gives us so many opportunities for connection that it is easy to get lost in continuous partial attention as we try and keep up. There is the danger that we are conditioning our attention spans to 140 characters or less.

It seems that all of these constant streams of attention try their best to keep us from deeply engaging a topic. So we look for ways of aggregating these streams - we get all giddy when we come across systems with the promise of simplification so we quickly sign up, only to later discover that this simplification did not happen and what we ended up with is just another site to check, another service demanding our attention.

We can become too connected, too reliant, and too caught up in the immediacy of the moment. It is remarkable how we can have the ability to track the news, the weather, the market, sport scores, and e-mail all when stopped at a red light (from the passenger seat of course). It is remarkable how we can be in almost constant contact with the 300 friends one has on Facebook, tweet with scores of acquaintances on Twitter, sell our crafts on etsy and eBay, and look for a soulmate on match.com.

There is amazing potential that comes from connectedness.

William Powers is a journalist who wrote the book Hamlet’s Blackberry. And in the book, he talks about how the pressures of managing all of our connections can cause us to adopt strategies that limit our attention on any one item. Powers agrees that there is great potential that comes from our wealth of connections, but cautions how “that potential is lost when your days are spread so thin that it is impossible to engage any experience with one’s whole self.” If you have ever found yourself giving only partial attention to a conversation because you were busy checking your smart phone, then you know what I am talking about.

Being hyper-connected opens us up to a host of opportunities, but we also open ourselves to the possibility of being constantly busy in managing these streams and in constantly directing our attention to the last item that comes across our feed.

A mentor of mine once commented that he “constantly finds himself postponing the important for the sake of the urgent.” How much of our urgency comes from our own doing? I’m not just speaking to the students in the front; I’m speaking to the whole audience. Studies of employees in an office environment revealed that workers react to 75% of new e-mail notifications within 6 seconds of receipt and 85% within the first three minutes of arrival.

We have these devices, called eye trackers, which are used by scientists to determine where users focus when they look at a computer screen. Using these devices, it’s been found that individuals who have their e-mail programs running in the background constantly gaze toward the new e-mail notification. In many cases, the monitoring for new e-mail superseded their other work.

There is another way. Just as technology can add to our levels of busyness, it can also help us to engage more deeply in the things that matter. The way I see it, there are two ways that we can use technology. We can continue and increase the constant pinball of our attention or we can use it to more deeply connect our thoughts and understanding.

And here’s the hidden gem. The same lessons that you will learn in your classes, that you can get from the liberal arts, offer a roadmap for how you can take ownership of these technologies as power tools to improve your studies. It can guide you in the choices you make about how you use technology.

Modern algorithms, the mathematics that powers your software, can help us connect with those of shared interest and can customize our news feeds so that we only see the news and views of those items for which we have indicated a preference. These recommendation systems can be wonderful for handling a deluge of information, but eventually it’s like drinking your own bathwater - you reinforce the same ideas.

The liberal arts philosophy guides us to not consume just from the same narrow stream of information, but to seek out alternative perspectives. Technology makes it easier than ever to connect to a variety of opinions and become exposed to the challenges of dealing with divergent, and often competing, viewpoints. There is this old aphorism that goes, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Use technology to expand your tool chest of ideas.

Technology has also made it as simple as the click of a button to share one’s thoughts with the world. With so much exposure to the viewpoints of pundits and experts and the guy next door, we can become inundated by the prevalence of views and take these as substitute for forming our own opinions.

Here the liberal arts offer another lesson of guidance. One of the great themes across philosophy, literature, and art is the struggle between taking our opinions from the outside world or looking to our inner selves to determine how to think. Use the ability to share your thoughts as an invitation to express your own opinion to the world – seek feedback.

The liberal arts reveal that it is through researching, thinking, persuading, and convincing those who might be resistant to change that we learn more about our own perspective and our own self. Education is a dialogue. These devices, these connections, help us to take part.

Last semester we had a panel that spoke about the conflicts and revolutions that were ongoing in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Discussion centered on how societies that are thousands of miles apart were experiencing similar frustrations and challenges. Here in the U.S. we could listen in on the comments from the revolutionaries, as these were being played out through the same social media systems we use everyday.

The liberal arts is about understanding diversity and about recognizing the concerns of world cultures. It is also about taking part in these conversations. These are still ongoing; use the opportunity to learn about the reasons for their cause and look for ways to lend your own voice to enhance and expand the discussion.

Learning about the struggles overseas will add perspective to your view of the challenges that are going on back here as well. And trust me, we have our challenges.

Oh yes, we have a host of challenges that will shape your time here at Hood and your future as members of the workforce, as informed citizens, and eventually as Hood alumni. The economy is in flux, we continue to battle disparities, inequities, entitlements, and injustices across issues of health care, education, debt, poverty, and marriage equality. These are challenges with which our nation is struggling. You’ve heard the rhetoric, our congress can’t get bills out of debate, they won’t compromise. The generation in office is not making much progress at all.

There are those that point to your generation with worry. They worry that you aren’t prepared to handle the challenges that, whether you like it or not, through no fault of your own, are going to be yours to sort out. They look at your generation and worry you won’t do any better.

I started off this talk by describing some of the perils that can come from being too connected, from becoming overwhelmed by, and passive in our use of technology. These are perils that face our tech-laden, interconnected society. These are some of the reasons that people worry about your generation. But what they don’t see is that there is tremendous promise here as well.

College students have the highest amount of social networking use. Demographically you are the most connected members of our population. Nationwide surveys by the Pew foundation have found that as active users of social networking, you are more trusting of others.

As active users of social networking, you have more close relationships.

You get more social support than other people.
You are more likely to be open to opposing points of view.
You are more charitable and you are more civicly engaged.

You are not like the other generations. You hold tremendous promise. You hold the potential to succeed where others have not. Students of Hood College, this is you.

And so I challenge you to look beyond the shininess and novelty of the latest technologies, to consider the substantive ways that technology can help you to better your studies, better your thinking, and better your self.

Technologies enable big things, the ones who are going to thrive in the digital age are going to be the ones that can move beyond the shininess, move beyond the urgent, to recognize the true potential is not in what these new technologies permit us to do, but in how we can harness these new technologies to better our own understanding, to better help others understand, and to better the world.

My hope, my expectation, is that you will live up to the promise we hold for your generation. Your connectedness, when shaped and guided by a liberal arts philosophy, can provide you with an education like the world has never known. And you are going to need it, because to solve these challenges we have, we are going to need you.

Thank you… and good luck.